ball had stopped and lay still, he dismounted forthright and paused awhile ere he should begin to climb and conned well in his mind the directions, one and all, given to him by the Darwaysh. Then, with firm courage and fast resolve, he set out afoot to reach the hill-top. But hardly had he begun to climb before he heard a voice beside him threatening him in churlish tongue and crying, “O youth of ill-omen, stand still that I may trounce thee for this thine insolence.” Hearing these insulting words of the Invisible Speaker, Prince Parwez felt his blood boil over; he could not refrain his rage and in his passion he clean forgot the words of wisdom wherewith the Fakir had warned him. He seized his sword and drawing it from the scabbard, turned about to slay the man who durst insult him on such wise; but he saw no one and, in the act of looking back both he and his horse became black stones. Meanwhile the Princess ceased not at all hours of the day and watches of the night to consult the string of pearls which Parwez had left her: she counted them overnight when she retired to rest, she slept with them around her neck during the hours of darkness, and when she awoke at the dawn of day she first of all consulted them and noted their condition. Now at the very hour when her second brother was turned to stone she found the pearls sticking one to other so close together that she might not move a single bead apart from its fellows and she knew thereby that Prince Parwez also was lost to her for ever.——And as the morn began to dawn Shahrazad held her peace till The end of the Six Hundred and Seventy-eighth Night.